Remote Senior Backend Engineer — AI-Driven Reliability

Affirm; Richmond (VA); On-site; USD 173,000 - 233,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health care coverage

Flexible Spending Wallets

Time off

Employee stock purchase plan (ESPP)

Job summary

Affirm is hiring a Software Engineer to design and build a next-generation reliability platform for production systems. You’ll blend distributed systems engineering with AI-assisted development to help teams understand, debug, and improve service health.

You’ll lead with a high bar for reliability and quality, own quarterly goals, and collaborate across product, design, and analytics. The role emphasizes ownership, strong communication, and scalable backend work.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience as a software engineer.
• Experience designing, developing and launching backend systems at scale (Python, Kotlin, AWS, MySQL, Kubernetes).
• Experience shipping web apps using React or Vue.
• Practical use of LLMs or AI frameworks to enhance automation and guidance.
• Ability to define a technical plan for delivering significant features with elegant design.
• Ability to make significant changes in a large code base safely.
• Strong ownership mindset and proactive feedback-seeking.
• Excellent written and verbal communication for collaboration with a global team.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

• Own and deliver quarterly goals for your team and guide engineers through ambiguity.
• Collaborate with product, design, and analytics to align on technical constraints and trade-offs.
• Identify and lead solutions to project, process, technology, or business issues.
• Support operations and keep services healthy with metrics and on-call efforts.
• Set and improve code review and design standards across teams.
• Mentor teammates and lead by example to develop talent.

Skills

Cross-functional collaboration

Ownership of delivery

Proactive problem solving

Strong communication

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience

Tools

Python

Kotlin

AWS

MySQL

Kubernetes

React

Vue

Job description

Affirm is hiring a Software Engineer to design and build a next-generation reliability platform for production systems. You’ll blend distributed systems engineering with AI-assisted development to help teams understand, debug, and improve service health.

You’ll lead with a high bar for reliability and quality, own quarterly goals, and collaborate across product, design, and analytics. The role emphasizes ownership, strong communication, and scalable backend work.